She’s back. And she doesn’t like what you’ve been saying about her.

The subject of this post was a tagline that I wrote 17 years ago, when I dreamed about doing a concert version of a show.

Which show?

Read the subject/tagline again . . . and guess?

Get it yet?

Yep . . .

Carrie. 

I'll admit it.  I was bloody obsessed.

I had gotten a hold of some "killer" bootlegs from London and Broadway from a guy online (serendipitous side note: that guy turned out to be Jeff Marx, author of Avenue Q!) and was intrigued by quotes calling half of it brilliant and half of it camp.  

I found more recordings by Betty Buckley and original Carrie Linzi Hateley that featured some of the tunes.  I went to Lincoln Center to watch the 10 minutes of footage they had (I had to make up some story about how I was doing a paper at NYU on flops in order to get permission to see it.  Oops. Busted.).  I bought a script off eBay.  I even have the original Playbill somewhere.

And I wanted to do it again.

My idea wasn't to do the full musical. I just wanted to do the brilliant half!  

The idea was to take the best elements of the musical, the best of the book (as read by celebs) and the best of the film, and combine them into one night of multimedia Carrie-awesomeness,

Surprise, surprise, I couldn't get the rights, although I am proud to say that Michael Gore did return my phone call.  I remember the message explicity.  "Thanks for calling, Ken.  At the moment, we're not releasing the rights to Carrie, because we're waiting for the right time to do it again."

Well, my friends . . . She's back.  And she doesn't like what . . . (Oh wait, I did that already). 

A small article was buried in this weekend's Variety about an official reading of the show coming up in the next few months (I hear that this guy is directing).  

I'd bet my original Carrie playbill that this is the hottest reading of the year.

Hottest. Get it?  Cuz at the end of the show, Carrie sets the gym on fire with her mind..  Hehe.  Awesome.